


They Say That Redemption's on Your Mind When You Think About Me

by jamestiqueeriuskirk



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blow Jobs, Bottom Thor (Marvel), Drunk Sex, Fantastic Racism, Internalized racism, Interspecies Relationship(s), M/M, Mental Health Issues, Pining, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Sibling Incest, Top Loki (Marvel), last-minute hug fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-27 13:24:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14426334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamestiqueeriuskirk/pseuds/jamestiqueeriuskirk
Summary: In which the Jotnar mate for life, and hormonal imbalance is a bitch, whether you know you have one or not.-Thor frowned. Loki was going to drive him mad one day, but then they would be even, he supposed. “What can I do to convince you that I’m genuine?”“You can abdicate.”“Loki,” he said. A warning, but with no real force behind it.“Sorry, I had to try.” Thor knew there was humor in there, somewhere, but he couldn’t find it in Loki’s tone or his face, search as he might.





	They Say That Redemption's on Your Mind When You Think About Me

**Author's Note:**

> "My body is the patron saint of want." - Invocation to St. Ashley, Lauren Milici

Loki tolerated the hug for longer than Thor would have expected, but he did, eventually, draw back. For a few, impossible moments Thor expected – or maybe just hoped – that he would close back in again, to hit a higher target, and kiss him – and didn’t Thor have cause to expect the impossible? Hadn’t, in the span of only a few days, Loki come back from the dead, and a sister they’d never known surface, and Asgard, the Realm Eternal, fall destroyed? Statistically, he had more reason to expect a kiss; they had done it before – but the moment passed.

Thor wasn’t sure whether his brother had even been aware of it.

But it was nice, too, that Loki stayed, that they could now be in the same room as one another and simply exist, not trying to kill one another, not at each other’s throats.

He let Thor pour him a drink, and then stayed for another, waiting to see if any effects took them – the contents of the bottle Thor selected at random were sweet and fruity, like a weak liqueur, and they mixed it with one of the juices dispensed from the hose on the bar, but they did not know what kind of beings the alcohol had been made for, so they cautiously waited to feel no effect at all or to suddenly pass out.

They didn’t say anything, really.

Their silence quickly became so companionable that it was a shock when Loki finally broke it, especially considering what he said to do so.

“I hated you for a long time, after that night.”

Thor looked up from his cups in shock. He hardly needed to ask what night – it was always just in reach, never farther away than the back of his mind – but it was unbelievable to think they were finally going to talk about it, and even more so that it was Loki who brought it up. It had been centuries, and Thor had supposed it would go on that way forever; but then, less than a month past he would not have expected them to talk about anything at all ever again.

But he never could have forgotten the way they’d drunkenly fallen into bed – or, as it were, into Thor’s bedroll – on a hunting trip, how his brother had had him three times before they were sated and fell into a dead sleep, how they’d risen the next morning, sick from more than their hangovers, wondering if Heimdall had watched their transgression, wondering if he would report on it if he had, and cut the trip short and avoided each other until it became too suspicious and logistically impossible to do so.

Thor hadn’t hated Loki, not ever, not after that night, so he let Loki continue.

“I know we agreed never to speak of it again, and to move on, but I found it almost impossible to do so. I couldn’t stop thinking about your touch.”

Thor had done the same, and he’d kept quiet about it as well: he’d scarcely dared to hope any affection of that type had survived in his brother past that night, especially not after Loki’s fall from the Bifrost made it seem impossible to think any affection of any type survived at all. It warmed him and gave him faltering hope to know how Loki felt – did Loki still feel that way? – as much as it upset him to hear about the splinter it drove between them under his notice.

“It became painful to be near you, and painful to be apart from you, as well. I was _sick_ with it. And you were carefree, sleeping with men and women left and right.”

“That was what we decided to do, brother,” Thor protested. Loki did this too often: expected Thor to read his mind and got angry and felt slighted when Thor could not. How should Thor have known Loki was anything other than mortified with what they had done, and would be anything more than mortified to hear Thor wanted it to happen again? He’d taken it at face value when his brother told him they must act like nothing had happened. That was only what was proper. He’d taken many to bed, over the years, and some he’d felt for, quite seriously; none of them had ever eclipsed Loki in his heart. Why must his brother assume differently? Why must he always think the worst of Thor? “To pretend that night had never happened and move on.”

“And don’t you think I tried?” Loki snapped. “It was _impossible_ , I tell you, despite my best efforts. Nothing again was ever so satisfying as my first time. In fact, nothing was satisfying _at all_.”

It had been Loki’s first time – his brother had told him as much, giggling, while they were fumbling out of their clothes in the little tent, and Thor can remember there being in his haze a sense of wonder, that he was going to be Loki’s first, that Loki either had never wanted anyone before or had at least not thought anyone worthy of the trouble of pursuit – and after that night he’d never shown much interest in having another with anyone else.

He hadn’t been celibate: there had been times when verbal manipulation failed and he had to resort to seduction to fully realize some plan, and there had been times when he had caved and gone to bed with some barmaid or whore just to get Thor’s friends off his back about how reserved he was being, spoiling the mood of their night while they were trying to make merry. But Thor could not remember a single time – after their shared night – when his brother had really _wanted_ to lay with someone.

And after every time he did so, anyway, Thor could remember how his brother walked away vaguely uncomfortable, even sick, shell-shocked, like his body was rejecting its own actions.

Thor had never asked him about it, but his mind had produced a good many theories: perhaps the perversity of his first time had turned Loki off from the act altogether, scared him away for good; perhaps the matter of the coupling being shared between them had had no bearing on it, and Loki had simply found he had no taste for such things.

But, apparently, his taste was just narrow, and only encompassed Thor – and encompassed Thor so totally and forcefully that love had soured into hate when neglected, rather than withering into apathy. Thor didn’t know what it meant, but he wished his brother had come to him sooner about it. Thor would have welcomed hearing how Loki felt. Still felt. Whatever was salvageable in the ruins of their relationship, Thor wanted desperately to save. He would be more than content, already, just to have his brother back, but if there was a chance that they could—

“You—you should have told me,” Thor said.

Loki frowned and hugged himself. “And what should I have said? That there was something horribly wrong with me, and I could not bring myself off to anything but the memory of fucking my own brother?” Loki’s voice was vicious so it didn’t have to be vulnerable.

“There was nothing wrong with you,” Thor said – at least, nothing that was not also wrong with Thor, for Thor had also pined for Loki unawares his brother did the same – and he reached for his brother. Loki knocked his hand away.

“Oh, yes, there was,” he laughed, and not a nice laugh: a laugh that preceded the announcement of some mean-spirited trick, only Thor had a feeling Loki wasn’t announcing his own work this time. “And for a long time, I wondered what abnormality I suffered. Why I was so sick with longing.”

“Brother, I also—”

“Quiet, Thor, I’m being honest for once; you’d do well to encourage it even if you like not what I have to say.” Thor shut up, though he couldn’t keep putting off saying his piece – he was going to burst with it soon – and Loki kept going. “You and your friends all made sport easily enough, why couldn’t I do the same? For a time, I just had to count it as a personal failure, another way I fell short of you, and every other Aes besides.”

Thor had a bad sort of feeling. Anger was creeping into his brother’s voice. Not at Thor, but no less dangerous.

“But there was my problem,” Loki said, after a short pause, and this time his voice had no emotion at all.

“What do you--?” Thor started to ask, frowning, but Loki held up a hand, and Thor let himself be silenced again.

“Did you know that the Jotnar mate for life, like wolves, or bilgesnipe, or any number of similar animals?” Loki’s tone was dark and bitter, and Thor’s mood dimmed to match, hearing it.

“None of this,” he said.

“And why not?” Loki laughed humorlessly. “Can’t I resent the monstrous heritage that’s doomed me to lust after my own brother for the rest of my life, doomed me to chemical dissatisfaction that I can’t have you?”

“And who says you can’t?” Thor asked. He thought of his brother, unable to understand why he felt so intensely and unable to banish the feeling, unable to move on like he thought Thor had, feeling abandoned, stewing in his own resentment and dissatisfaction – not the only thing that finally turned him against Thor, maybe not even the thing that tipped the scales, but a weighty factor – until he resolved to wage war on him just because there was nothing else he could think to do. His gut and his heart twisted alike.

But if Loki could blame his biology, Thor did not know what his own excuse was.

Loki trembled with something that might have been anger but might have been hurt and closed his eyes, like he wanted to regroup in peace, away from Thor, his reluctant tormentor once again. “Don’t tease me.”

“I’m not,” Thor said, serious.

“It’s been centuries, brother,” Loki spat. “And never once in all that time did you reach for me again.”

“Neither did you!” Thor felt for Loki, but Loki could not put this all on him. If Loki was to change, really, to better himself and establish a place at Thor’s side, in the new Asgard, he would have to take responsibility for that which he had done. Thor would gladly answer for his own actions, but his brother had to do the same, or Thor would be so busy defending himself against unfairly miss-assigned blame that he couldn’t make right what was really wrong.

“But I wanted to! I didn’t _recover_ , like _you_ did. I didn’t visit half the beds in Asgard and the other realms beyond. You did, so the only logical conclusion I had to draw was that you didn’t want me any longer.”

“Brother, you should have asked.” Thor was teetering on the edge of sympathy, about to fall into impatience, and at both himself and his brother. There was no reason that Loki should have been a plant kept in the dark all these years, and there was blame to go around. One of them should have said something.

“I didn’t dare. It was wrong, you know that; that’s why we agreed to keep hush about it in the first place.” Perhaps so, but they had done a lot worse to one another in the interim than incest. And they might do worse still, if given the wrong chance.

“Maybe it’s worse to deny ourselves.”

“Yes, maybe,” Loki said, really rearing up, without the slightest provocation from Thor – just from within himself, and maybe a little from within the now-empty, crystalline bottle sitting on the bar. “Maybe you had better subject yourself to me anew so that I am kept docile and don’t try to destroy the ship or kill you in my hysteria! Best to sate the beast so it does not go mad with _rut_!”

Oh, here was the burning core of the matter.

Thor caught his brother’s wrists in his hands, anticipating a strike soon if he allowed him to spiral any more. The issue he raised was not one Thor had.

“Enough, Loki! I don’t pity you, I want you! I love you still.” He tried to keep his voice gentle, though Loki did do his best to make it difficult, like he always did.

Loki struggled against his hold only feebly and then went slack. Maybe he had tired himself out. It would be a great relief if he had, though it wouldn’t mean Thor was out of the woods yet.

“You’re making this quite a week for yourself, brother. First, you play a trick on the god of mischief, and now, you lie to the god of lies.”

Thor frowned. Loki was going to drive him mad one day, but then they would be even, he supposed. “What can I do to convince you that I’m genuine?”

“You can abdicate.”

“Loki,” he said. A warning, but with no real force behind it.

“Sorry, I had to try.” Thor knew there was humor in there, somewhere, but he couldn’t find it in Loki’s tone or his face, search as he might.

“Don’t look on me so intently.” Loki seemed to rile beneath his gaze, perhaps self-consciously.

“May I kiss you, instead?”

His brother’s face was terrible to see. Loki looked like he had found religion and was about to be martyred for it.

Thor let go of Loki’s wrists, half expecting a blow to be his answer, but they fell to Loki’s sides, limp as his posture, and Thor stepped closer to his brother without injury.

He tilted Loki’s chin with one firm hand and dragged him into a kiss. Loki kept his eyes open to watch his approach, and they were wary, but Thor closed his just before he pressed their lips together. Maybe this was not a way Loki wanted to be seen.

Loki shuddered apart in the embrace, and when Thor pulled back to assess the damage, Loki took a great, heaving breath in and then back out. He looked very fragile indeed, but he reached for Thor with a strength that, while faltering, was undeniable.

“Brother,” Thor said before Loki fastened their lips back together to take the rest of the sentence down his throat.

Loki crowded him backwards until the back of Thor’s calves knocked the bedframe, and then Loki tipped him back onto it. Thor went down, and Loki crawled on top of him.

Thor let him divest them both of their clothing and stepped in to help when Loki’s hands began to shake too badly.

When they were naked, Loki kissed him, and not just on the mouth, but all over – down his neck, all across the broad planes of his chest, along the lines of his hips, between his legs – and then sucked his cock and slid shaking, desperate fingers inside him. Thor laid back against the pillows, bared in his entirety for his brother, because it was what Loki needed and he wanted.

Loki finally spread Thor’s legs wide and hooked them over his shoulders and entered him, and Thor felt like it was him who had been incomplete all these centuries waiting for this. Loki answered his wordless cry with a snarl Thor felt cringing guilty to call animalistic and a hard latch of teeth to his throat.

Loki held on like he didn’t want to let go, which was just how Thor felt, as well, though he only grasped at Loki’s neck until they were both ready to come apart.

“Mine,” Loki croaked weakly when he came, reaching for Thor’s cock to bring him off, too.

“ _Yes,_ ” Thor agreed.

**Author's Note:**

> [Thotki.tumblr.com](https://thotki.tumblr.com)


End file.
